Sleep is one of the greatest mysteries of our kind. We know we need it. We understand what it does to our bodies. And yet there is still so much about sleep that we do not understand.

If a human was forcefully kept awake with a drug cocktail that gave their body everything they needed from sleep. They would start going loopy. For some reason our unconscious mind needs sleep. For what reason we are unsure. All we know is without adequate sleep, the human mind begins to wander and fail

.And sleep isn’t just vital for our minds either. For anyone who is dieting, exercising, or works a stressful job, sleep is vital. We know sleep is important for weight loss and recuperating our muscles after the gym.

Insomnia is one of the most common medical conditions on the planet. One in four women suffer from it, and as many as one in seven grown adults deal with insomnia every day. The market is filled with hundreds of products that claim to solve all your sleep problems, but most are little more than placebos. And you could always get drugs, but that is a dangerous slope.

But we know of an alternate solution that has been rising in popularity in recent years. The world of ASMR videos and Binaural Beats.

 

ASMR

ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it. Put in simple terms it means a sensation that starts at your head and gently rolls down your spine. For some people, this is extremely relaxing, like someone gently massaging you. For others, it is creepy and unnerving.

But how does it work? Our brain is finely tuned to respond to an audio input. And it has learned, through evolution, to react to certain sounds for either safety reasons or for pleasure. That is how ASMR works. The videos, often played at a low volume and recorded close to the mic, use various sounds to stimulate the brain and create the meridian response.

Everyone’s brain is wired differently. Which is why there are so many types of ASMR. Goo squishing. Rattling noises. Scraping rough materials. Whispering. People who enjoy ASMR tend to find what works for them and explore it. The ASMR community has blown up in recent years.

 

Binaural Beats

While ASMR is quite a basic, yet powerful response. Binaural beats are much more scientific and intricate. You most likely won’t have heard of them, and for good reason. There is a lot of speculation about their credibility.

But what are they? Binaural Beats are an audio track that plays sounds at various frequencies. The idea is that these frequencies can stimulate the brain in a specific way, depending on what the track wants to achieve. In theory, you can make a person do anything if you find the right frequency.

This includes simulating the effects of various drugs, such as weed or MDMA. But they can also be used to enhance meditations and simulate pleasant experiences of calm throughout the body. Some people claim that binaural beats work for them, others say they feel nothing.

This can be explained by a number of factors. The first being that everyone’s brain is different. This is always going to be the defining trait in the effectiveness of any brain-based gimmick. The second is the quality of the track itself. You can type binaural beats into YouTube and find hundreds of videos that make use of terrible quality audio.

 

Sleepy Time

So can either of these methods be used to help improve individuals sleeping habits? Already we have seen studies conducted into the effectiveness of ASMR in relation to sleep. And they found that for some people it did actually work. The relaxing feeling it creates allows the listener to regulate their breathing and empty their mind, thus leading to sleep.

The jury is out on Binaural beats. While some people will claim they can put them to sleep. There has been no conclusive evidence to suggest these claims are accurate. But all we can suggest is that you try either method for yourself. You never know what might work for you.